Generational.

Life's been a bit hectic the past couple of weeks. Doesn't that sound so cliche?

Re: the post below this one, I'm finally making headway on the BIGGEST writing project in my life. What else? Well, my friend Catherine and I are digging through online travelogues and our own frenetic minds to figure out the best itinerary for Italy Adventure 2010. I'm still workin' my little arse off serving espresso by morning and dealing with history students by afternoon-light. The sun is back, and the temperature is finally regularly hovering above 60 degrees. Oh, and I've had some enlightening conversations (and debates) with various fine folks about health-care reform. I've been conceptualizing it as a long-overdue revolution. Every generation needs one, or more even, and this is one of ours. The thing is, none of this should HAVE to be a revolution. Health care (and health-ful-ness more generally) is a fundamental right and a very human struggle within which we all apparently need a hand--whether to heal a sickness or sprout some compassion. I refuse to get too negative about the reform package's backlash, in fear of letting negativity "win," but the conservative middle and upper-middle class response to all this really got me thinking...

Right now I'm reading Phillip Roth's American Pastoral--to note, the NYTimes Book Review's runner-up for the best work of American fiction in the last 25 years. Three-fourths of it is a novel within a novel, a re-creation of the life of a Jewish-American businessmen (and former storied high school athlete) by his little brother's old chum from the their school days in Newark, New Jersey. The premise is that Nate Zuckerman (Roth's alter ego) remained near-obsessed with Seymour "Swede" Levov for most of his life, mesmerized by Swede's athletic grace and generally positive (and seemingly simplistic) outlook on life. Though he only spoke with Swede a handful of times, Zuckerman takes up the task of painting the man's life into a narrative struggle. Swede's brother brought this on, by revealing to Nate at their 45th high-school reunion not only that Swede has died but also that his life was a lot less perfect than anyone thought. Most notably, that his first daughter (who Nate never knew existed) went into hiding in 1968 after setting off a bomb in protest of the Vietnam War, killing a by-stander and irrevocably altering her father's ideas of an "ideal" life.

The best part of Roth's work here is his constant attention to the conceptualization of generations and the transitions between them. In short, Americans have been conditioned to work hard, work honest, and work for the "hope" of the generation that will come after them. Make life better for your children, we've all been told, so that things will be easier and they won't have to struggle quite so much. The Swede's father quite literally sweated his way out of poverty as a new immigrant and built a comfortable middle-class existence for his sons. Nate the writer reminds us that this was what everyone was supposed to do. Because every generation gets better, right? Smarter, luckier, has more opportunities laid before them. Nate believes that Swede had chosen his life-plan carefully, following all the rules according to his post as the head of the "next generation"--college, training in the family business, and then a beautiful wife and a too-big, over-decorated house in the trendiest suburb. He followed the rules, in other words, and yet his daughter didn't. She rebeled outright--dressed herself down, put on weight, taunted her parents, and then set off a bomb. She ruined the pattern, right?

Roth writes that this pattern is expected, lauded, but thin as paper. Swede's daughter proves that. At his 45th high school reunion, Nate looks around at all the wrinkled face and saggin bodies and wonders where the great hope and promise they'd all once felt had gone. They'd been told they were the GREATEST generation, after all, in the wake of World War II and the rise of the consumer's republic. Had they followed all the rules only to be laughed at by those younger than them? Or are they all just survivors--proof that life never works out the way you planned, but it can still be good?

All this brings me to a point about the recent health-care situation. Like Roth points out in some poignant passages, the American middle-class often gets way too comfortable. The soccer moms who speak of "being blessed" with abundant happiness and an abundance of things. The businessmen who work like dogs and then blow all their money on five-star dining and trips to the Caribbean for Lord knows what. Or even the college kids who sit in large classrooms with books in front of them because they've been told they deserve to be there, that they should be there. Middle class life is comfortable, it's repetitive, these days it's Pottery Barn and Prozac and Priuses. But what happens when life busts open that paper-thin bubble, dudes?

That's Roth's point. That life is unpredictable, sometimes horrific, even for the best and most hard-working among us. Which is WHY we need health-care reform in this country. The wealthier folk who are protesting all of this...I just don't understand how they don't see how close we all are from the fall. Don't we all want a cushion? A helping hand in our darkest hours? Some reassurance on the scariest days?

Yes.